Why is the film about Bob Dylan so fascinating?

BarcelonaSuddenly I began to cry deeply, moved by everything that was explained in that scene I was watching in the cinema. By how the filmmaker James Mangold had decided to stage the interpretation of the song. The times they are a-changin' by Bob Dylan, because of the way the actor Timothée Chalamet was singing it... and because some verses eroded by clichés acquired new meanings at that precise moment.

A complete unknown, the film about Bob Dylan's early artistic years (1961-1965), is a fascinating proposal constructed like a legend that consciously plays with simulation and anachronism, sometimes leaving documented facts in the limbo of off-screen and generating a hilarious possibility: that some Dylanophile might sulk like some folk purists did when Dylan brandished the electric guitar. It is a fable that, as defended by the deputy head of Culture of the ARA, Xavi Serra, challenges the stereotypes of biopic because it flees from stories of overcoming and/or redemption. The dramatic arc does not seek to close a moral story, but to place the protagonist in the situation of the character of western The film ends with him walking towards the horizon with the sun on his back and his saddlebags full of longing, unheeded prayers, dreams and dignity, all at once. But instead of on horseback, he's riding a motorcycle.

As film critic Eulàlia Iglesias says, Mangold chooses the path of the end of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance ("Print the legend!"), because in the West (as in music), "when the legend surpasses reality, the legend is published." Although, apparently, the script is based on the book Dylan goes electric!, by Elijah Wald, the filmmaker does not challenge "the Dylan mystery" with the vast journalistic documentation on that period or with the biographical material from books such as Positively Main Street (1971), by Toby Thompson; Dylan (1972), by Anthony Scaduto, or above all In Freewheelin' time: a memoir of Greenwich Village in the sixties, by Suze Rotolo, the woman who in the film is represented by the character of Sylvie Russo, played by actress Elle Fanning. Mangold prefers to defy the mystery by showing the plot of an artist who was not exactly "an unknown." He does this with small details placed at relevant moments, such as the photo album that Joan Baez's character (actress Monica Barbaro) looks through and that dismantles the invention of the fairground past; a fantasy, by the way, that Dylan himself would evoke in the seventies with The Rolling Thunder Revue Minstrel Tour.

Dylan, dressed as a legend

Mangold missed the mark with the biopic by Johnny Cash, On the tightrope (2005), too attached to the conventions of the genre. On the other hand, in A complete unknown Mangold plays a different card and presents Dylan as a 20-year-old man who invents the past to dress up as a legend, although his talent surely does not need so many masks to legitimize itself. And once the game is dealt, he creates a fiction based on real facts and lies that, paradoxically, becomes a magnificent portrait of the young artist. He does not draw a Dylan touched by an innate genius, but a curious young man who internalizes the musical poetics of Woody Guthrie (whom he probably envies for living the reality he explained in his songs) and the folk bonhomie of Pete Seeger (whose enthusiasm he admires) with the same naturalness with which he will be fascinated by the electric blues of guitarist Mike Bloomfield.

Misanthropy and narcissism appear, it would be absurd to ignore their presence, but Mangold compensates for this with scenes in which Dylan makes decisions based on advice from others or artistic discoveries that he praises and later adopts with open arms. The film focuses on this Dylan-the-viewer who listens to and considers the opinions of others, whether it is Russo's recommendation to record new songs or the support he receives when Johnny Cash's character tells him not to stop messing around. In any case, it describes narcissism and respect without loading the calligraphy, simply with details such as turning off a television that is boring with current events or dedicating a few seconds to the exchange of glances between Dylan and Seeger (an extraordinary Edward Norton playing one of the best people in the world).

Yes, knowing the context and biography of Bob Dylan surely enriches the vision of A complete unknown, but the merit of the film is that it works perfectly as a story of the longings, contradictions and conflicts inherent in the transactions between life and art. All this between the interpretation of A song for Woody, in 1961, in a hospital in front of Woody Guthrie himself (the actor Scoot McNairy) and the moment when he sings and plays the acoustic guitar It's all over now, Baby Blue at the 1965 Newport Festival, just after having unleashed the thunderstorm with Maggie's farm, Like a rolling stone and It takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry. It is worth highlighting the magnificent performance, as an actor and as a singer, offered by Timothée Chalamet, who embodies the legend of Dylan with the same attitude with which the singer Cat Power faced the songbook of the author of Blowin' in the wind on the disk Cat Power sings Dylan: the 1966 Royal Albert Hall concert (2023): fleeing from imitation to scratch the bottom of the cup of the most genuine emotions. By the way, the controversy over whether acoustic or electric Dylan was better was settled by Dylan himself on that British tour in 1966: the pinch was as good and as exciting on electric as on acoustic.

Timothée Chalamet and Monica Barbaro, an impeccable duo

As he points out the critic Gerard Casau, A complete unknown It's a kind of musical that doesn't seem like one, but where most of the songs have an intentional dramaturgical meaning. This is one of the most fascinating proposals of the film: the way in which the interpretations of the songs build the story and transmit their emotional charge. There are three prodigious examples, which also evoke different off-screen scenes. One is the scene in which Chalamet and Barbaro, playing Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, sing It's not me, babe; the lyrics of the song confirm that whatever they were romantically tied to is not going anywhere, but the performance speaks of the absolute happiness they find together on stage. In addition, Mangold makes Sylvie Russo's character, watching from the side of the stage, assume the difficulty of being part of that adventure. The off-screen is a future in which Dylan, married to Sara Lownds, will publish the song Visions of Johanna. Because artists never close a story.

The second example is an invented scene in which Dylan visits the public television studio where Pete Seeger hosts an educational music show. The guest is the bluesman Jesse Moffette, a fictional character played by the son of Chicago blues pioneer Muddy Waters (as pointed out to me by Xavi Serra). Dylan comes over to jam a blues with Moffette, and Mangold uses the scene to convey that a musician's main desire is to play for the pleasure of playing. The off-screen is twofold: toward the past, the legacy of Muddy Waters; and toward the future, Dylan's never-ending tour.

The third example, although there are others, is the one I explained at the beginning of the article: the interpretation of The times they are a-changin'Musically, it resonates with American folk and Scottish ballads, and thematically it combines the archetypal protest song with generational confrontation and a few drops of unmistakably biblical prophetic alarm. Chalamet sings it respecting these origins, but aware of what Mangold wants to do. The reverse shot is a succession of reverse shots of the audience and musicians like Pete Seeger, and each one seems to be interpreting in their own way verses like "don't criticize what you can't understand" or what speaks of paths that have aged. The off-screen is the power of the audience to strip the author and appropriate the songs. For things like this, and for Timothée Chalamet, A complete unknown It's such a fascinating movie.